Return to Romance: The Strange Love Stories of Ogden Whitney

by Ogden Whitney and Dan Nadel

Dan Nadel (Editor), Liana Finck (Introduction), and Frank Santoro (Editor)

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Book cover for Return to Romance

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By turns amusing and disturbing, this collection of 1960s romance comic strips provides a provocative window into male-female power dynamics as conceived by one of mid-century America's foremost comic book artists.

Ogden Whitney was one of the unsung masters of American comics. He is perhaps best remembered for co-creating the satirical superhero Herbie Popnecker, also known as the Fat Fury, but his romance comics of the late 1950s and 1960s may be even more unique. In Whitney’s hands, the standard formula of meet-cute, minor complications, and final blissful kiss becomes something very different: an unsettling vision of midcentury American romance as a devastating power struggle, a form of intimate psychological warfare dressed up in pearls and flannel suits. From suburban lawns and offices to rocket labs and factories, his men and women scheme and clash, dominate and escape. It is darkly hilarious, truly terrifying—and yes, occasionally even a bit romantic.
  • ISBN10 1681373440
  • ISBN13 9781681373447
  • Publish Date 1 October 2019
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint The New York Review of Books, Inc